Two workers are stuck on scaffolding at One World Trade Center, about 69 stories above street level.

Zachary Prensky

New York City police and firefighters rescued two window washers who were stuck Wednesday afternoon on a scaffolding at the 69th floor of One World Trade Center, authorities said.

The workers were tethered to the scaffolding and hadn’t been seriously injured as firefighters tried to find a way to bring them down, a Fire Department of New York spokesman said. The 911 call came in at 12:42 p.m. Read More »

Window washers Svyatoslav Hubin, left, and Andriy Mykyta work on the glass curtain of the Rose Center for Earth and Space in Manhattan.

New York’s legion of window washers have long fascinated city dwellers below with their fearlessness. But the future of the profession might belong to those even more impervious to dangerous heights: robots.

Clearing a path to the market soon will be the Winbot 7, a compact machine billed by manufacturer Ecovacs Robotics as the first full-service window-washing robot. The device, which resembles a Roomba vacuum cleaner, attaches itself to the pane, maps out its perimeter and proceeds to clean the surface, playing a tinny tune when the work is completed.

Nick Savadian, executive general manager of the company’s U.S. arm, said the robot is aimed at busy homeowners looking for a labor-saving escape from boring chores. “One thing we’re short of in life is time,” he said.

Mr. Savadian allowed that his company’s small robots could have potential applications some day on gleaming skyscrapers, where window work carries risks. “Winbot is very proud to put itself in that position,” he said. “It will clean the outside without taking any chances of liability.”

But the prospect of a near future in which scaffold-riding professionals are replaced by automatons doesn’t appeal to everyone — particularly window washers and the New Yorkers who romanticize them. Read More »